COLUMBIA MALL/AVONDALE MALL: DEKALB COUNTY, GA
Kim Thompson's Commentary
Posted July 9, 2007 (user submitted)
It was one of the few malls we went to when I was a kid I
knew it as Columbia
mall. During its decline in the 1980's, my friend told me
about a "new mall"
called Avondale with a martial arts store (which it really
wasn't) When we got
there, I said "this isn't new" There were just a few
stores left.
Avondale Mall, originally known as Columbia Mall, opened in
1964 and was the
first enclosed mall in Georgia. The original name referred
to its intersection of
Columbia and Memorial Drives (State Route 154). Its
original anchors were
Davison's and Sears, and both opened prior to the
completion of the mall. The mall
itself was small and T-shaped with only one entrance. The
mall began to fade
due to white flight in the 1970s and 1980s, as well as the
opening of other
nearby malls (South DeKalb and Northlake primarily). As
the anchor stores left, the
inability to attract replacements led to the decline of
the mall. Sears left
the mall in 1984 and Davison's, which by then had changed
its name to that of its
parent company Macy's, closed their clearance store there
in 1995.
The mall's name change occurred during a renovation in the
mid-80's, when
Columbia Mall became Avondale Mall. This renovation
resulted in an expansion of the
mall into all of the former Sears store, subdividing both
the upper and lower
floors into smaller tenant spaces. At one time, the lower
level of the Sears
store housed a new, smaller Sears Outlet Store, which
later became a Goody's for a
period of time. The mall also featured a McCrory's in its
later years, up to
its closing.
After the departure of Sears, and prior to the commencement
of renovations, it
was a location for some of the interior and exterior
shopping mall scenes of
the Chuck Norris movie "Invasion USA". The "entry" crash
of the Chevy pickup into
the mall is at the mall's main entrance. The scenes inside
the mall with the
Nissan pickup were in the interior of the mall nearest the
Davison's end, the
escalator scene is inside the old Sears building, and the
"exit" crash through
the window is the western side of Sears on the first level
(the movie then cut to
an exterior scene of a mall in South Florida).
Interestingly, the "exit" scene
also shows a blue and white Cushman "Security" cart that
was borrowed from
Belvedere Plaza across the street - Columbia/Avondale Mall
had no security
vehicles of its own at the time.
After Davison's/Macy's left the mall, that anchor
building's upper floor was
converted to a 16 screen movie theater, while the lower
floor remained vacant
save a newly built stairwell leading from the lower level
mall to the upper level
theatres. Already struggling and further affected by the
September 11, 2001
attacks, the mall was closed at the end of 2001 and now
sits vacant. Wal-Mart had
planned to demolish and redevelop the site, but considered
other locations over
community resistance from residents of nearby Avondale
Estates.
The mall is unique in that it has an old family cemetery in
its parking lot.
The granite structure looks like a fortress, square in
shape with inward-sloping
walls, and an iron fence at the top. The graves actually
are at the top of the
structure, as this is the original grade level of the
land; the construction of
the mall removed approximately 12 feet of dirt from the
former grade level.
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avondale_Mall - Wikipedia